


The Feast of St Nicholas

by cj2017, feroxargentea



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cj2017/pseuds/cj2017, https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2012 perfect_duet Christmas Calendar</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feast of St Nicholas

“The feast of saint Who, for —’s sake?” cried Jack, aghast.

Jack Aubrey was not a man greatly given to blasphemy, but this saint’s-day business took the... it crossed a... He sighted the correct proverb on the horizon; but, knowing he did not have time to catch it, he settled for nautical familiarity instead: this saint’s-day business really _bore away the prize_ , that’s what it did.

“The Feast of St Nicholas, it will be, I believe, sir,” repeated Pullings, keeping a respectful (and prudent) eight feet of quarterdeck between himself and his captain.

“St Nicholas? The fellow with the snakes?”

Mowett gave a demure cough. “I think was perhaps St Patrick, sir.”

“Let us not confuse the issue further, if you please, Mr Mowett. If St Nicholas wasn’t the Irishman, who the devil was he?”

The _Surprise_ ’s lieutenants had no further suggestions, it seemed. Jack glared past them at the fidgeting assemblage of midshipmen.

“What say you young scholars, hey? Would any of you care to explain to me why you cannot recall the relevant page of the _Essentials of a Gentleman’s Classical Education_?”

The least bashful of the young gentlemen – Babbington, wiping his nose on his sleeve – piped up with, “Chapter seven, I believe, sir: St Nicholas sailed to the Isle of the Blessed. In the _Golden Hind_.”

 “Isle of the Blessed. Quite,” said Jack firmly. “Thank you, Mr Babbington.” The information did not strike him as perfectly correct – had it not been the _Golden Fleece_? – but it would never do to challenge it on uncertain grounds. “And the traditional observances of his feast day would be? Mr Calamy? Mr Parslow?”

“T-traditions, sir? Er, evergreen garlands with bright fruits and stars and, um, red ribbons, sir,” said little Parslow in a burst of inspiration. “And angels, and shoes full of gifts, and... oh, and fruitcake,” – this last being added in a very hopeful tone indeed.

“Cake, is it?”

“Aye sir,” Calamy cut in hastily. “A big cake, covered in spirits and set alight. That’s traditional, sir.”

“Quite. Very well. Thank you, Mr Calamy, you and your berth-mates may go. Mr Pullings, a word with you in my cabin, if you please.”

***

“Now then, Tom.”

“Aye sir.” Pullings stood tall and tried to look confident.

 “Doctor Maturin is due to return to the barky tomorrow morning, as you will no doubt be aware.”

“Aye sir.”

“And tomorrow is the sixth of the month.”

“Aye sir.”

“And the sixth of this month is St Nicholas’ Day, as we have been at some pains to establish.”

Pullings opened his mouth to say “Aye sir” again, caught the Captain’s eye, and thought better of it.

“And, the Doctor not having been in who should say the highest of spirits lately, it is our bounden duty to show him a _Surprising_ degree of welcome, eh?”

Pullings grasped at the meagre pun with huge relief. “Ha ha, sir. A _Surprising_ welcome it is, sir.”

“Excellent. The full St Nicholas effect. You have your orders, Tom.”

***

Late that evening, Pullings shut the door of his tiny cabin, climbed into his hanging cot and laid his head down with a sigh of relief. The watch just gone had felt like the longest of his life, but everything was finally in hand for the morrow.

The sailmaker’s crew had spent all afternoon unpicking the ribbons from the seams of the hands’ best shore-going rig.

Bonden, poking around in the hold, had unearthed with triumph the last pot of yellow paint, which – mixed with a touch of vermilion that Nagle had been saving for the figurehead’s lips – had produced a precious half-pint of orange paint.

Killick had been denying for the last couple of months that there were any sweetmeats whatsoever left in the Captain’s stores, but for Dr Maturin’s sake he had been persuaded to hand over a full pound of sugarloaf and a pound of currants to the gunroom cook, from whose stove a spicy scent was now drifting.

And the midshipmen, by swinging bait overhead on hooked lines, had collected a whole trunkful of slightly soiled seagull feathers from their squawking prizes before letting them loose again.

Everything was under control. If this effort did not raise the Doctor’s spirits, Tom thought, there was nothing in Heaven or earth that could.

***

When Stephen Maturin was hauled up the _Surprise_ ’s side the next morning, he realised at once that the frigate was under some strange disguise or other. Nautical charades were not unusual in the Navy, in his experience – such ruses being intended, as Jack would put it, to amuse the enemy – but this particular disguise was beyond anything he had seen attempted before.

The ship’s rigging was transformed, utterly transformed, with swags of seaweed spiralling around the stays, intertwined with bright ribbons of many colours. Patches of salt where the weed had dried out gave an effect almost as jolly as snow on evergreen boughs, and the garlands were studded with dried starfish and dozens of sea-urchin shells that a lick of orange paint had turned into amazingly convincing replicas of oranges and tangerines.

Stephen gaped for a full minute. His eyes travelled up the rigging, up all that mad extravagance of decoration, as far as the tiny figure of Parslow clinging to the crosstrees, clad in a white tunic and covered in gull-feathers. A costume that might have done for Icarus, Stephen thought, or could it possibly have been intended as angelic?

He lowered his stupefied gaze again to the deck. There, the entire crew’s best pumps were laid out, toeing the line in their divisions, quite as if their owners were standing in them in their usual weekly muster; and in each shoe lay a tiny sailcloth parcel tied up in a scrap of red ribbon.

The Captain stood by the main hatchway, his round face beaming like the sun. “Welcome back, Doctor!” he cried.

Stephen nodded at him. “Good morning to you now,” he said rather blankly, his attention immediately distracted by the figure just behind Jack. It was the captain’s steward, nodding, becking, and bearing a hideous grin, a platter of blackish solid-looking cake and a pot of coffee. The cake was arrayed in careful slices surrounded by a ring of leaping blue fire, and from the smell of singeing it was clear that at some point the flames had gone much too close to Killick’s lamb-chop sideburns.

“A happy return, sir. Festive cake for your honour?” Killick said, proffering a slice and continuing in a piercing mutter, “Which it’d better be bloody festive, seeing as which it cost me a good two inches of my whiskers...”

Stephen took the slice wonderingly, bit into it hard and swore. Poking around in his mouth, he fished out the object he had nearly broken a molar on: a Maltese gold piece, now with distinct tooth-marks across its face.

“Jesus, Mary and... _oh_.”

He paused for a second and looked around again at the weirdly decorative ship with its huddle of expectant officers, and the light finally broke through. For all love, these Englishmen and their tomfoolery! The Angel on the Crosstrees, the coins in the flaming pudding... This, he realised, was Christmas, put through the mincer of naval ignorance and reassembled into new and splendid (and no doubt shortly untouchable) traditions. Somebody had told the Surprises about the sixth of December.

“Jesus, Mary and _Saint Nicholas_.” He grinned at Jack, stuffed the rest of the cake into his mouth and spoke around its brandy-soaked goodness.

“A very happy return it is too, my dear, and a very happy St Nicholas’ Day to you all!”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Surprises, like me, know almost nothing about St Nicholas. But it appears that what we ought to be doing is making speculaas biscuits, which sounds like a Very Good Idea. 
> 
> So here is a recipe: http://www.fisheaters.com/customsadvent3.html


End file.
